


Bamboozled! On the Rooftop

by Anonymous



Category: NCT (Band), WAYV
Genre: Gratuitous use of comic book references, M/M, Mutual Pining, Yukhei is a lovesick puppy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23045503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: If he had any sense, Yukhei would get the hell off this roof and shimmy back down the fire escape, back to the warmth and security of his crappy uni apartment.He won’t, though. He can’t. Not when Donghyuck, resident boy-of-his-dreams, is sitting next to him, resting his head on Yukhei’s shoulder and rambling on about everything and anything. Yukhei would rather die than break this moment.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56
Collections: Anonymous





	Bamboozled! On the Rooftop

It’s cold, colder than usual, even for early November. If he had any sense, Yukhei would get the hell off this roof and shimmy back down the fire escape, back to the warmth and security of his crappy uni apartment.

He won’t, though. He can’t. Not when Donghyuck, resident boy-of-his-dreams, is sitting next to him, resting his head on Yukhei’s shoulder and rambling on about everything and anything. Yukhei would rather die than break this moment.

This isn’t the first time they’ve ended up in this position. It happens roughly once a week, every Friday night like clockwork. Or… morning, he supposes - according to the glaring 01:13, it’s technically Saturday morning. There’s a bunch of texts underneath, mostly from Mark and Ten, but he’s not going to look at them until Donghyuck is done doing whatever it is that takes him away from the party downstairs.

Yukhei is not a big party person. That tends to surprise people because he’s an outgoing extrovert and never turns down an invite, but college parties, house parties, are… boring. There, he said it! A bunch of dumb young adults getting trashed and screaming along to Africa by Toto is only fun the first three or four times it happens, and Ten and Sicheng have been hosting these parties every Friday for the past three years and who is he too go against his most beloved flatmates. Yukhei would never say it to their faces, but pretty tired of them by now. Sometimes he bails, spends the night at Mark’s, or Kun’s or occasionally with Renjun, watching bad films and eating cheap pizza.

Occasionally, on the rare occasion all three of them get roped into sticking around the apartment and helping with one of Ten’s parties, he’ll spend his evening on the roof instead.

Donghyuck is the complete opposite. More times than not, he’s the first one to get trashed or the person who starts everyone off scream-singing Africa. Or both. Usually, it’s both. He is very much, for lack of a better term, _a party person_.

Which if anything makes it more confusing that for the last few weeks, he’s been bailing mid-party to come and hang out on the roof with Yukhei.

“I’m just saying,” Donghyuck mumbles as he wriggles around until he manages to tuck himself under Yukhei’s arm, “Steph and Jason are treated so unfairly. Steph had, like, the shortest run as robin _ever_ and Jason’s entire personality was retconned to be a rebellious arsehole so that DC could have their angst porn in _a death in the family_.”

“Totally,” Yukhei agrees, even though he is a marvel stan through and through and doesn’t really know who Jason Todd is. His tipsy mind is reeling from having his crush so close to him though, so he’d probably agree to anything Donghyuck said right now. Luckily his lukewarm response doesn’t matter because when Donghyuck gets like this, passionate and energised about a random topic Yukhei knows nothing about, nothing can stop him.

The first few times it had surprised him, Donghyuck’s not-so-hidden nerdiness. Maybe it shouldn't have. It’s a nineties cliche rom com stereotype, that the pretty, sporty popular kid can’t have hidden depths. Kun would hit him upside the head and give him a lecture on public vs private persona if he ever found out.

“Steph’s whole deal was so clearly based in sexism of shitty comic nerds, of course Batman's sidekick can't be a woman. Making her Batgirl was a great decision but she should have gotten to be Robin a lot longer!” Donghyuck is almost shouting at this point, and it’s one of the cutest things Yukhei has ever seen. He looks like a riled-up kitten, shivering in the night air. He considers wrapping the smaller boy in his jacket, but Donghyuck jerks forward before he can.

“And as for Jason Todd,” he seethes. “He was tortured and murdered by the joker after trying to save his birth mother and when he broke out of his grave, no one even noticed! And then he’s in a coma for however many months, and then he’s tossed in the Lazarus pit. He had a shit fucking time, no wonder he went all _murder squad_ and became Red Hood, I would too!” 

And oh, okay, there’s a name Yukhei recognises. He might be a Marvel man but he’s dabbled into a few DC films and TV shows. Who wouldn’t, Wonder Woman is iconic. “Didn’t Red Hood, like… try and kill his brothers or something?”

Donghyuck shifts back under his arm, wriggling around again until they’re looking at each other. His hair is ruffled and he’s pouting as he looks up which does _something_ to Yukhei’s heart. God, he’s _fucked._

“You’re not wrong exactly, but in his defence, he’s not the only Robin to try and kill one of his brothers, Damian actually does kill Dick in _Injustice,”_ his nose is wrinkled in distaste and he really looks conflicted. This is the most concern Yukhei has ever seen from him outside of exam season or one of Renjun’s existential crises.

“I don’t think he’s a hero, and if I had to choose one to give the universe to it would be Steph, obviously, she had to date Tim and that’s punishment enough. I know a lot of what Jason did after coming back to Gotham was completely inexcusable, but I do think he’s a decent person suffering at the hands of writers who don't like him. Or, at least as decent a person born and raised in Gotham can be. He deserves access to mental health resources, not to be sent to Arkham with the Joker, who literally tortured and murdered him.” he looks so earnest and it’s hilarious to Yukhei.

This is the boy who faced down Ten on a pissed off rampage and laughed, and here he is close to tears over some fictional comic book characters.

“Plus he’s killed nazis, so double points for that.”

That sounds fucking _dark_. Yukhei starts to tell him as much, but Hyuck has already started pulling his own coat off of the floor and around his shoulders. “I’m tired,” he says. “I’m going home now.”

This is pretty typical. He never knows when Donghyuck is going to leave, it’s always abrupt, leaving him feeling weirdly empty for at least half an hour afterwards. Yukhei scuffles to his feet quickly and sticks a hand out for Donghyuck. “I’ll be here next week, if you want to talk more about the whole _Batfamily deserving better_ stuff?”

He gets a smile in return for that. “Sure. We can talk about how film verse Harley Quinn is clearly not getting anything from the shit show that is her relationship with the Joker, and how she should copy her comic book counterpart and get with Poison Ivy, who is deeply in love with her, instead.”

Huh. Maybe Yukhei needs to get on this nerd shit, he kind of relates.

Donghyuck leaves quickly, and without much fanfare. Yukhei makes it back downstairs as the party is winding down and Donghyuck is already long gone by then, having abandoned both Yukhei and the party. Or maybe he had never gone back to the party at all.

Sicheng looks up from where he’s perched on the kitchen counter as Yukhei wanders through, a glass in one hand and his phone in the other. His eyes are slightly glazed over but he’s still present enough to give Yukhei a sympathetic look when Yukhei catches his gaze.

The worst part about pathetic, one-sided crushes, he thinks, isn’t the heartache, and it isn't the constant fear that the object of your affections is going to figure you out. The worst part is how obvious it makes you. Sicheng figured Yukhei’s crush out the first time he saw him and Donghyuck in the same room. months ago. And, if Sicheng can figure it out, how long is it until Donghyuck realises as well? Yukhei is living on borrowed time.

  
  
  


Yukhei has liked Donghyuck since the beginning of his second year.

He and Mark had been charged with helping to run the fencing society, part of second year soc duties. Most of the people who’d come up to see the stall had been friendly enough but mostly forgettable. And then came Jaemin, and with him, Donghyuck.

It hadn’t been love at first sight, but it had been damn near close. Donghyuck was pretty and smiley and confident and completely at odds with what Yukhei had been like at the beginning of his first year. To put it frankly, he was out of Yukhei’s league.

Mark had to be the one to give Jaemin the intro spiel because Yukhei was too busy trying to flirt with Donghyuck, which became infinitely more awkward when it was made clear that Jaemin and Donghyuck were dating, though thankfully he’s pretty sure neither of them had realised that was what he was trying to do.

Jaemin ended up joining the society and though they remain as close friends as ever, Jaemin and Donghyuck broke up three months later – not that you would be able to tell, they’re still sickeningly co-dependant. The only notable difference for Yukhei is that Donghyuck no longer hangs around the fringes of every fencing meet they have and, as such, Yukhei sees him way less.

Maybe this would be the point when a normal, rational person would let go of their crush. Unfortunately, rational has never been his forte. He tends to obsess, to find something he cares about and dig his nails in as far as they will go.

It’s not like he can help but like Donghyuck, anyway. It’s just that Donghyuck is so beautiful, cheering for Jaemin under the fluorescent light of the fencing meets or under light-polluted night sky when he should be inside. He’s beautiful all the time, and Yukhei doesn’t know how to let go of that. He doesn’t know if he wants to. It’s even harder to let go of those feelings now that Donghyuck has decided to ditch his friends for solo roof hangouts with Yukhei on a weekly basis.

His crush was looking more and more like _feelings._ Even so, a part of him always hoped that it was no more than an intense aesthetic appreciation, that he just thought Donghyuck was really pretty and the moment his appearance changed too much, he’d be over it. That happened to Ten all the time, so why couldn't it be happening with him?

  
  
  


All of that hope is washed securely down the drain the next time Donghyuck climbs up the fire escape to meet him on the roof, with curly purple hair.

It's been a week exactly since they last saw each other, almost to the minute, and somehow Donghyuck looks completely different. Part of Yukhei misses the pretty, sandy blond but a bigger, louder part of him is having a heart attack over this shining, pretty boy in front of him.

His hair is the colour of a three day old bruise in the best way possible and it complements his warm skin tone so well. His fringe is pushed back, off from his forehead in a rare hairstyle he only adopts once in a blue moon, and it makes Yukhei’s poor, weak heart hurt.

More than anything, blond to purple is such an abrupt change from the faux-natural blond he’d had just days before that for a few seconds he doesn’t realise that the pretty boy climbing up the fire escape is Donghyuck.

It’s vaguely reminiscent of the vibrant firetruck red he’d had when Yukhei had first met him, but more… grown up? A year and a half is not that long in the grand scheme of things but Donghyuck has matured a lot in that time. The slight chubbiness has melted off of his cheeks and his jawline has become sharper. His legs are almost certainly the same length they were when they met but they seem longer, and it’s playing havoc on Yukhei’s poor heart.

All in all, he looks like Yukhei’s dream boy. Donghyuck _is_ his dream boy, and as he cocks an eyebrow and gestures to the floor Yukhei is sprawled on, he feels that truth like a brand searing into his heart.

“Is that seat taken?” he asks, and his voice sends shivers up Yukhei’s spine.

“No,” he says. “It’s all yours.”


End file.
